Project - Air Cube v2

[Waynio]

Thanks for your comments again cellsite60, appreciated .

And here we go, last pictures on this case I believe, borrowed a slightly better camera for these, woo hoo .

On this one my new 5870 peeks over .

Was well worth re attempting the front .

[Waynio]

Thanks again cellsite60 .

LiTHiUM0XiD3, thanks, and the stages of a good build lol

blueonblack was absolutely right about the grills adding to noise though, must have added a good 5db on top of the plain holes to the case, Tried tollerating the noise difference for a couple of hours and didn't like it much , too used to it being nice & quiet, so I went & dug out my old zalman zm mfc1 + fan controller and hooked all the front panel & side fans to it & lowered the speed a little and it's now the same noise as it were with plain circles while keeping a good flow of air going through, was considering doing volt mods but figured it be easier and cleaner just to use a fan controller, it's hidden inside the case and can catch some air flow so it shouldn't overheat and fail. Side effect of this is temps have gone up by 3c but thats not bad.

The spiral type grills are more restrictive than the ones in the middle so I can run the middle ones a bit faster than the spiral ones and noise stays the same so it's worked out good .

Also fixed the top problem I had with it not sitting flush , I should probably replace the pictures.

[Waynio]

Definately last pictures now because I fixed the top and to show the fan controller.

[Waynio]

I bought some 10mm spacers and rubber washers to put between the front panel & fans so I could put the fan controller back in the box of parts and it really helped cut the extra noise from the air restriction, so back to decent temps and normal noise .

[Waynio]

Can't really call this a new project, more of a part 2 , I wanted a nice new unit for my consoles, pc & favourite games/dvds to be all in 1 space saving stack, had quite a few redesigns & settled for this one, seems my modding has overspilled into making furniture .

It's going to be a stand for the air cube on top, ps3 level below with great ventilation, a level below for my xbox 360, dvd storage below on the bottom 2 levels on both sides with a psu sat in the middle of level 2 for powering the xbox 360 & fans with room for control pads inbetween the dvds.

I'm also working on a new top & rear panel for the xbox 360 to accommodate for better cooling replacing the gpu heatsink for a 360 cpu heatsink & placing bga coolers on all chips with 120mm fan intake & exhaust & dvd drive relocation .

[Waynio]

This aluminium was for redoing the corners & bottom sides & back panel.

When doing my design over & over I figured I dont have to re do the corners & bottom sides but I still have good use for the sheet to reorientate the back panel a little, so the angle bars in this picture are not needed for the build, had a slight redesign after I made the order.
Here is the right side panel botch shots, they will be covered by the chunky angle bars that hold the air cube in place, this mod has spawned from the botched corners & price of delivery not being worth just doing the air cube.

This is the aluminium for the new build, I beleive if the frame is good & strong then there is no true need for expensive thick sheet, especially for what I'm making.

I was sat on this aluminium for over a week which is a 1st, I usually can't wait but I wanted to do this properly, I needed a tool for doing clean bar cuts at 45 degrees & 90 degrees.
Missed out on a bargain for a really good cut off saw at £100 it was worth £300 but because of very low money I had to get a much cheaper alternative, a manual cheapish £30 mitre saw, the build would have gone tragically wrong if I didn't .

Should have been 1 of the 1st tools I added to my collection when working with aluminium bars, it's proven to be a very awesome tool for this build .

Finally the work begins woo hoo .

Friday
Got the angle bars for all levels cut to size, all 45 degree cuts.

Saturday
Got loads more cut to size, not much more to do other than a few more bars (but the thicker ones) & 6 thin sheets.

This is 1 of the basic levels

Got all bars cut to size today except for the main corner angle bars, want to get everything correct before I do them, so I'm just working on making the levels 1st.

Did a loose fit of all the levels & they are great, the bottom panel will be ultra strong, it looked pretty reasonable in google sketchup but in reality it does look a bit overkill, nonetheless it will be very strong indeed lol .

More updates soon

[Waynio]

Thanks blue lol.
I got all the sheets cut to size today & made the new back panel, all was going very good until I attempted to do the mesh again, I failed miserably, didn't space them out enough so it was starting to look awful, should have stopped as soon as I seen the marks were too close, I will work a different vent into it, not to worry , I'll up the pictures when I have a decent fix, design time for the rest of today & more dremel time tomorrow .

[Waynio]

Cheers Jase, it's been on hold the past 3 days so I can get the rear aircube panel redone, heres the update on that.

Oh no's, done the spacing wrong by 3mm for the mesh, should have been every 9 or 10mm, should have stopped after the 1st hole & remade the grid to follow, but no I ended up with this & thinking I'd have to buy another sheet.

My dremel has been dying slowly lately & has now become useless, it was getting lateish so couldn't use the air dremel (very noisy) so I made a quick alternative for the design & drilled within the areas I wanted cutting out & done a ton of filing, even used a hacksaw blade pushing & pulling through the area to get it done lol, was thinking it's just too rough looking but carried on anyway, it could still use a little more smoothing out here & there but I think it's turned out not so bad, what do you all think?.

Be able to get back to the stack soon .

[Waynio]

Thanks for feeback jase .

This update covers the last few days.

With my dremel being useless now & the reinforced cutting discs having the wrong sized hole 1/8" making it a hassle to change discs because they also need aligning, I tried this other cutting air tool but couldn't see where I was cutting so put it away, this picture shows the new right side window & grill for the psu & also the 3mm higher motherboard tray, the flat bars are a temporary loose fix at the moment, they will be attached properly when it's time.

This shows the washers & 10mm spacers I used to cut down the noise from the restrictive front grills, I realised I only mentioned it in the log so heres a picture .

I can get to work on a few other things while waiting for stuff to come, the new cooling & top & back for the xbox 360, the ps3 stand, paint the fans, trim the back panel & smooth out any rough spots & get it painted, so no excuse for not getting something done while I wait .

Getting the feet off the air cube might be tough because I used araldite which sets like stone, it was the feet that introduced a little wonkyness to the case, seems it's sat correct on the right side & not on the left which is why there was a gap on the top left, can picture myself having to hammer & chissel them off so I can tap a solid bar for a good fit to existing bolts coming through the bottom.

I decided to do the xbox today, made a good bit of progress, spent near 12 hours on it, figured I'd keep the gpu heatsink so it will be about 130mm at it's highest point, got the basic functionality sorted on it, just need to make a nice cover for it all then the xbox is ready for painting, got the tap & tap wrench & it works a treat, used it for the rear fan mount, holds it nice & firm , this was a rrod xbox I bought & fixed it had a 0020 error code & figured the only way it will stay fixed is if I boost the cooling, all of the long screws still have their place but I'm thinking of loosing the middle back one so I can create a duct for the rear fan, as you can see it's half in & half out. Ha, it just dawned on me while looking at the picture that I'll probably have to make a new hold down strip else it might not close, doh! .

More soon .

[Waynio]

Well here you go then, man I'm knackered lol, it's worth it though .

Didn't get much done yesterday or today as the sun was too tempting to miss after a long winter .
Got the rear fan properly secured down while the xbox was properly closed, filed the corner supports of the rear fan so the strip of metal would fit closely for it to be well in place.

On this back shot I plan to get rid of all the internal mesh, fill in all the plastic mesh & create a nice hole for fan wires to come through & a little cut to size strip bent to get rid of the gap from the fan to the plastic xbox case so it doesn't look rough, I'm also going to fill in the dvd slot hole & keep the eject button functional, waiting for some velcro tape to secure the dvd drive down which will reduce dvd vibration, the actual dvd tray will be stealthed also.

Measured, marked & placed little angle bars in place & riveted them to the xbox shell & tapped a hole on them ready for fixing a cover which I'm still thinking about best way to do it.

Thought I'd try & make a 1 piece cover, 1st try at using my cut to smaller pieces steel flat bar from my 1st metal bender, tripple checked the required measurements & marked the sheet, ready for cutting the corners out, it's really a pretty good cheap method for cutting sheet metal, think I'll use this method quite often

Human jigsaw lol .

This is a shot with the cut up steel bar from my previous sheet metal bender, they are cut to size for making back pci/io pieces, still not tried making my own yet though.

Going good so far.

Woo hoo .

The edges will be smoothed & closed together, I just had enough for the day lol.

1 tiny detail I forgot to think about is the right side clip on piece, 1 of the upper slots will not be able to slot in, but I'll work something out for that & luckily it's not the important hdd side .

More soon .